(no subject)
It's settled and I can't believe how lucky we are!! We didn't think we were going to be able to manage a trip for our first anniversary and were planning to just have a special "on vacation" weekend around here instead.
Then we volunteered to get bumped off our flight home from family reunion and scored free domestic tickets! We decided to try and arrange a trip to San Francisco using them to get us there and hotel points that his parents (thankfully) collect and (thankfully!!!) encourage their kids to use to shelter us while there.
But we soon discovered how hard it is to actually use the flight vouchers. WHAT a pain. If we had booked back in July when we first got them, we technically *could* have used them, if we didn't mind 3 transfers each way... but for a trip that far away and for only having a week to take it, we didn't want to spend a third of it in transit and were a bit indignant that they make it so hard to use the "reward" they give you for doing them a favor. By the time October & November rolled around, no other options or creative arrival destinations (e.g. landing in San Jose and taking a train to SF) were available anymore.
We decided that we had to broaden our choices for destinations and had just gone to the airline site to check some possibilities out, when up popped a special for European flights from some destinations (including our local airport) to other destinations (including London). The thing with the vouchers is that while they're good for a free domestic ticket, they're also valid as $200 coupons off paid fare. We'd been determined not to use that, especially considering what they were charging for full-fare to SanFran when they *should* have been getting us there for free. But - with the European option, it gave us a sort of pleasant surprise about just how good of a deal it was. It was less to fly to London than to my hometown (not kidding), so we decided to go for it!
We got the tickets, got a great hotel with points, and are now starting to look at some things to put on the itinerary - it just happened so fast that it's hard to believe we're really going to do it! It'll be so much fun - my guy is great to travel with and we have a long wish-list of places that we'd like to go if we can. I'm getting excited...